Plan better. Buy smarter. Build with confidence.
Calculate the materials you need for home and outdoor projects. Get clear quantity estimates, bag or box counts, waste allowance, and cost planning in one place. Yardwork Calculator is a free material calculator built for the jobs homeowners and small crews run every week.
Start with a popular tool
Find your calculator
Three groups cover the whole job list
Every construction calculator on this site sits in one of three groups. Yard work runs by the cubic yard and the ton. Rooms run by the square foot. Lumber runs by the board foot. Pick your group and the right tool is one tap away.
Yard materials
Bulk material for outdoor jobs. Each tool here returns cubic yards, tons and a bag count together, so you can order by the truck or by the bag.
Measure and floors
Area comes before every order. Measure a room or a yard once. Then turn that area into boxes of flooring with the waste for your lay pattern built in.
Paint and tile run on the same area math. Measure once and both answers follow.
Wood and lumber
Lumber sells by the board foot, and the shelf name hides the true size. This group shows nominal and actual board feet side by side, with waste by wood type.
The board foot tool prices wood by volume. The lumber tool counts the boards a job needs.
Featured calculator
Our full concrete calculator handles slabs, footings, walls, columns and post holes. It shows yards, bags and cost in one result.
How it works
Enter your measurements
Type the length, width and depth of your project. Each field names its unit, so feet and inches never mix.
Get your estimate
See the material amount, the bag count, the weight and the cost in one clear result, in US or metric units.
Plan your purchase
Order the right amount once. Skip the second trip to the store.
A garden bed, from measure to bags
Here is one small job, run the way the mulch calculator runs it. Three moves take you from a tape measure to an order.
The same three moves run every tool on this page. Measure the space. Turn the size into area or volume. Read the order in the unit the store sells.
One result, four clear numbers
A garden bed that is 20 ft long, 12 ft wide and 4 in deep needs 2.96 cubic yards of material. Add a 10 percent waste allowance and you order 3.26 cubic yards. Every calculator here shows the same four numbers together.
The true area or volume of your project, before any allowance. The bare math, in plain sight.
The amount to actually buy, with the waste allowance added. This is the number you give the store.
The same order counted in bags or boxes, rounded up to whole units. You never buy a part of a bag.
Tons for the truck plan, plus a cost line when you add a price. Both order routes price out on your real job.
Three answers people ask first
How much does one cubic yard cover?
At 3 inches deep, one yard covers 108 square feet. At 2 inches it covers 162 square feet. At 4 inches it covers 81.
Run your bed on the mulch calculatorHow many bags of mulch make one cubic yard?
One yard takes 13.5 bags of 2 cubic feet. In 3 cubic foot bags, the count is 9 bags per yard.
Count bags for your bedHow much does one cubic yard weigh?
It follows the material. Concrete runs about 4,000 pounds per yard. Gravel runs 2,800. Topsoil runs 2,200 and mulch runs about 500.
Weigh your load on the gravel calculatorStart from your project
Most people know the project, not the material name. Find your job below. Each card names the tools that run it, in the order you need them.
Driveway or path base
Stone depth, tons and bags for the base. Then the slab math when a concrete top goes on.
Patio or shed slab
Cubic yards for the truck route, and full bag counts when the pour stays small enough to mix by hand.
Garden beds
Soil for the base first. Then mulch by depth, in yards and in bags, with the old layer taken into account.
New lawn
Measure the yard first. Then order topsoil by depth, with the settling allowance already planned in.
New floor
The true room area comes first, even for odd shapes. Then boxes with the waste for your lay pattern.
Deck or fence
Board feet for the frame, with nominal and actual sizes side by side. Concrete for the post holes below.
Why plan with Yardwork Calculator
Right quantities, standard formulas and real material densities.
Budget aware, add a bag price in the concrete calculator to see the cost first.
Buy once, waste allowance built into every result.
Phone friendly, big buttons and clear fields that work at the store and in the yard.
Material density table
Cubic yards for bulk material like concrete, gravel, mulch and soil.
Square feet for floors, paint, sod and room sizes.
Lumber yards price by this unit. It comes from the name size of the board.
Tons from volume, with the density of your material from the table below.
| Material | Weight (lbs per cubic yard) | Weight (tons per cubic yard) |
|---|---|---|
| Concrete | 4,000 | 2.00 |
| Gravel | 2,800 | 1.40 |
| Topsoil | 2,200 | 1.10 |
| Mulch | 500 | 0.25 |
| Sand | 2,600 | 1.30 |
Questions, answered
Ready to plan your project?
Pick a calculator and get your numbers in seconds.